Swiss Bishops' 'solidarity' on Lefebvre

BERNE, Switzerland (NC): the The Swiss bishops have expressed their "solidarity" with regard to the Vatican decision to withdraw canonical approval from the traditionalist seminary of the Priestly Fraternity of St Pius X in Econe.
Earlier, Bishop Pierre Mamie of Lausanne. Geneva and Fribourg had withdrawn such approval in agreement with the Vatican Congregations for the Clergy, for Religious and for Catholic Education, and also with the approval of Bishop Francois-Nestor Adam of Sion, within whose diocese the seminary is located.
The Swiss bishops also expressed regret that they had to disagree publicly with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, former archbishop of Dakar, Senegal, ' and former superior general of the Holy Ghost Fathers, who founded the seminary and received canonical approval for it in 1970.
The Swiss bishops reminded both clergy and laity that the Church depended on acceptance of the decisions of the Vatican II and of the Church's magisterium in allegiance to both the Pope and the bishops.
All contrary behaviour, they said, disrupted unity and hurt the Church.
Their statement refers to a contrast "between those claiming obedience to Popes of yesterday while refusing it to the Pope of today." At a Press conference, Bishop Mamie, speaking also on behalf of Cardinal Francois Marty of Paris because many of the Econe students are French, invited the seminarians there to contact him or Bishop Adam, Both bishops are willing, he said, to enable them to continue their studies at the University of Fribourg.
Vatican Radio reported that the Swiss bishops met and "took the occasion to note to all, priests and laity, that to build a Church it was necessary to follow the directives of her magisterium, above all attachment and loyalty to the Holy Father and to one's own diocesan bishop."
The radio also reported that Bishop Mamie had said that he and Cardinal Marty would arrange for the Econe seminarians, if they wished it, either incardination (acceptance by the bishop) in their original dioceses or entry into a religious order, either of which is necessary for preparation for the priesthood.
In his earlier statement withdrawing approval, Bishop Mamie said that the "strong attachment" of the Priestly Fraternity of St Pius X and of the Econe seminary "for ancient liturgical tradition and for the Latin language, its desire to defend the values of the faith and of discipline essential in the Church against certain ways of thinking and acting, covered, in reality, within this fraternity, a conscious and explicit rejection of the decisions of Vatican Council It and of the authority of Pope Paul VI."
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